2026 ISSI Guest Artists
Riana Anthony, cello
Riana Anthony is an acclaimed cellist celebrated for her exquisite artistry and profound musicality. She has performed at leading international venues including Lincoln Center in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Le Domaine Forget de Charlevoix in Canada, Victoria Hall in Geneva, and the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, as well as throughout Belgium at the Royal Palace, Flagey, Bozar, Mons Arsonic Hall, and in Parisian stages such as the Auditorium du Louvre, Radio France, Salle Cortot, and Fondation Louis Vuitton.
Highlights of her solo career include the European premiere of John Williams’ Highwood’s Ghost with the Brussels Philharmonic under Stéphane Denève—praised by Klassik Begeistert as “a performance of musical mystery that created goosebumps”. —her Kennedy Center debut, recital tours in China and Denmark, and her debut at the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center under conductor Cao Peng. She has also appeared as soloist with the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra and at the Peninsula Music Festival under Victor Yampolsky, among others.
Equally dedicated to chamber music, Riana is regularly invited to perform at major international festivals, including the Rome Chamber Music Festival, Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, Seiji Ozawa International Academy, Ravel Academy Festival, Schiermonnikoog Festival, Festival Classissimo, Potager du Roi at Versailles, Festival du Vexin, La Belle Saison, Festival des Minimes, Berlin’s Crescendo Festival, Domaine Forget in Canada, and Festival Tibor Varga in Switzerland. Her quartet won first prize at the Dover Quartet Competition for its interpretation of Lutosławski’s String Quartet, later broadcast on WFMT’s Music in Chicago, and her piano trio received recognition at the Plowman Chamber Music Competition.
Since 2025, she has been a founding member of Les Songes Musicaux, a collective of chamber music festivals in France dedicated to creating meaningful musical encounters.
Born in Japan to a Chinese mother and an American father, Riana draws deeply from her multicultural heritage, shaping a musical identity that unites Eastern discipline, Japanese refinement, European tradition, and American innovation.
She began cello studies under her mother’s guidance at the age of nine, and made her solo debut at twelve with the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra performing concertos by Haydn and Dvořák. International recognition came early, with top honors in competitions including the Izuminomori Cello Competition in Japan, the Hawaii Cello Competition, the MTNA Competition, the Viva Hall Cello Competition, the Samuel and Elinor Thaviu String Competition, and the Musicians Club of Women Competition in Chicago. In 2022, she reached the semifinals of the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Belgium, where her performance of Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C major with the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie received widespread praise for its technical brilliance and emotional depth.
Her artistry has been nurtured by full scholarships to the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings and Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, where she studied with Hans Jørgen Jensen and Julie Albers. She later became artist-in-residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium under Gary Hoffman and Jeroen Reuling, supported by a fellowship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation.
William Hagen, violin
William Hagen has performed as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician across the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. In the 2025/26 season, William returns as soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, makes his debut with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, performs as soloist with orchestras across the United States, and performs recitals and chamber music in both the United States and Europe.
As soloist, William has appeared with the Chicago Symphony, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Detroit Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony (HR Sinfonieorchester), San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Utah Symphony, and many others around the globe.
As recitalist and chamber musician, William has performed at venues such as Wigmore Hall and the Louvre, and collaborated with artists such as Steven Isserlis, Gidon Kremer, Edgar Meyer, and Tabea Zimmerman, among others. He maintains an active schedule on both sides of the Atlantic, making frequent trips to Europe and cities around the US to play a wide range of repertoire.
In 2020, William released his debut album, “Danse Russe,” with his good friend and frequent collaborator, pianist Albert Cano Smit. The album is available on all streaming platforms.
A native of Salt Lake City, Utah, William began playing the violin at the age of 4, studying the Suzuki method with Natalie Reed and then Deborah Moench. He studied with Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho at the Juilliard School, Christian Tetzlaff at the Kronberg Academy, and was a longtime student of Robert Lipsett, studying with Mr. Lipsett for 11 years both at the Colburn Community School of Performing Arts and at the Colburn Conservatory of Music. In 2015, William won 3rd prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.
William performs on the 1732 “Arkwright Lady Rebecca Sylvan” Antonio Stradivari, and on a violin bow by Francois Xavier Tourte, both on generous loan from the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation.
Will is from a baseball-loving family and played quite a lot of competitive baseball growing up. He hit 24 career home runs—this info was omitted from previous bios, which greatly saddened Will’s father.
Fry Street Quartet
https://frystreetquartet.com/
Touring music of the masters as well as exciting original works from visionary composers of our time, the Fry Street Quartet has perfected a “blend of technical precision and scorching spontaneity” (The Strad). Since securing the Grand Prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the quartet has reached audiences from Carnegie Hall to London, and Sarajevo to Jerusalem, exploring the medium of the string quartet and its life-affirming potential with “profound understanding…depth of expression, and stunning technical astuteness” (Deseret Morning News).
With a discography that includes a wide range of works from Haydn and Beethoven to Stravinsky, Janacek and Rorem, the quartet is known for being “equally at home in the classic repertoire of Mozart and Beethoven or contemporary music.” (Palm Beach Daily News). Navona records recently released The Crossroads Project, which features commissioned works by Laura Kaminsky and Libby Larsen, and up next is a recording of Kaminsky’s lauded new chamber opera As One, which will be released on Albany Records.
The FSQ’s tour repertoire reaches many corners of the musical spectrum, including works of Britten, Schubert, Beethoven and Bartok, as well as programs of American women composers Laura Kaminsky, Amy Beach, Joan Tower and Libby Larsen. Recently, the Salt Lake City-based NOVA series presented the FSQ’s cycle of the six quartets of Bela Bartok paired with Haydn’s String Quartets Op. 76, highlighting a juxtaposition of masterpieces by two great innovators for the string quartet. In November 2018, the FSQ will proudly present a complete Bartok Cycle in the Russell Wanlass Performance Hall at Utah State University, featuring eminent Bartok scholar Peter Laki.
The FSQ premiered Laura Kaminsky’s chamber opera As One with soprano Sasha Cooke and baritone Kelly Markgraff at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and has gone on to perform the work with Hawaii Opera Theater, Lyric Opera Kansas City, and Chautauqua Opera.
In addition to collaborations with acclaimed instrumentalists (including Joseph Kalichstein, Wu Han, Paul Katz, Donald Weilerstein, Misha Dichter, Andres Cardenes and Roger Tapping, among others), the Fry Street Quartet has commissioned and toured new works by a wide range of composers. Pandemonium by Brazilian composer Clarice Assad received its Fry Street premiere with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra; Michael Ellison’s Fiddlin‘ was co-commissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music Series and the Salt Lake City based NOVA series; and both Laura Kaminsky’s Rising Tide and Libby Larsen’s Emergence were commissioned especially for the quartet’s global sustainability initiative, The Crossroads Project.
After more than 30 performances in three different countries, The Crossroads Project: Rising Tide continues to resonate with audiences. This fresh approach to communicating society’s sustainability challenges draws upon all the senses with a unique blend of science and art, and has been featured on NPR’s joe’s big idea (aired during All Things Considered), as well as in publications by Yale Climate Connections, Reuters, and the New York Times.
The quartet’s significant touring history includes performances at major venues, festivals, and for distinguished series such as Carnegie Hall and the Schneider Series at the New School in New York, the Jewel Box series in Chicago, Chamber Music Columbus, the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, the DiBartolo Performing Arts Center at Notre Dame, the Theosophical Society in London, and the Mozart Gemeinde in Klagenfurt, Austria. The quartet also enjoys a continuing residency with the Salt Lake City-based NOVA series. Projects have included the Schoenberg Chamber Symphony under the direction of Utah Symphony Music Director Thierry Fischer, the Utah premieres of string quartets by Michael Ellison and Andrew Norman, and frequent collaborations with members of the Utah Symphony.
The Fry Street Quartet is pleased to hold the Dan C. and Manon Caine Russell Endowed String Quartet Residency at the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University.